INTERVIEW #118 SOLUS
Based in: Sweden, Uppsala
Founded in: 2021
Founded by: Five teenagers; Lukas, Annie, Adam, Sigrid, Viggo as a UF company. Now I (Viggo) and Lukas are working on Solus full-time as an actual company and Adam works with us part-time (A UF company is a company youth company we started as a part of our school education).
Stores: https://solus.nu, free shipping worldwide.
Price range: 14,95 € each ring, but with the very popular offer 3 for 2.
Instagram: @Solus.nu
Hello SOLUS, welcome to A Sustainable Closet! Happy to have you here, tell our readers about your brand, who are you?
Hello dear reader, we are Solus! A sustainable brand which makes colourful and beautiful jewellery out of 100% recycled plastic. Produced with care in the countryside of Uppsala Sweden by us, the founders Lukas and Viggo. We will pave the way for a more sustainable jewellery industry where sustainability and fashion go hand in hand, and no one should be forced to choose between the two.
How and where are the beautiful rings produced, who are your workers?
Our beautiful rings are produced at Lukas’s farm where we have refurbished his grandpa's old working shed into our new production space. We are based in Sweden and we produce all our products by ourselves. So me and Lukas are the ones who produce all the rings.
Where do you source the plastic material from?
We source our plastic from a local football arena that screws off bottle caps before handing out the soda bottles, they do this because of Sweden's safety regulations. We knew this was a problem and have now taken it as our mission to upcycle these bottle caps into beautiful jewellery. We also source our white plastic, which we use a lot, from a local milk producer who sells milk in plastic jugs. He then collects them and hands them over to us for us to recycle.
Where on the planet are your customers based?
Our customers are from all over the world, but mainly from within Europe. We sell mostly to people from Italy, Sweden, France and Germany. However we have sold to almost all the EU countries, and here are some other countries we are impressed to have sold to USA, Canada, Colombia, Japan, Hongkong, Australia and Iraq.
Where do you find inspiration for your unique rings?
Our inspiration comes from the brand 4ocean which made bracelets from recycled glass and plastic braid. We saw that and wanted to do something like it and then we came up with rings that were really trendy at the time. Then we took inspiration from the YouTube channel called ” Brothers Make” which made pencils from recycled plastic, and from that video, we learned a lot about making things out of recycled plastic.
What have been and are the major challenges of starting SOLUS?
As with many sustainable brands our biggest challenges have been with our production. Mostly with the production time and minimizing the waste. At the beginning a ring would take about an hour to make since it required a lot of steps and about three people working. But now after about two years of production and optimization, we have a new production that only requires one person and that can produce much more efficiently. We have also drastically reduced our waste with this new production method which we are really proud of.
What has been and is the largest gain?
We have had a lot of large gains from our time with Solus. One large gain from this is that we have learned A LOT from this journey since this is our first ”real” company. Practical lessons about the normal things from starting up and keeping a company alive and a lot of important lessons about the value of running a sustainable company.
Another large gain is that this journey has been a real eye-opener for us that it is possible for people to make a change, through trying out an idea and making something out of it.
What do you think needs to change in the jewellery industry to make it more sustainable?
As with a lot of other markets, there are some especially important things that need to change. But for environmental sustainability, we think that there is a large problem with the jewellery market because of the environmental impact of the mining of these metals, and then there is often a long production chain from the extraction of the minerals to the production and then shipping it out to the customers, which all together make a very bad carbon footprint.
There also needs to be big changes regarding social sustainability, as people’s human rights are sometimes abused both during the extraction of minerals and during the production of the jewellery.
It’s hard to say what is needed for a change, but some things would probably get a lot better with stronger regulations, certifications and raising awareness. A huge change could also be made by supporting ethical brands that recycle and upcycle.
What's up next, do you have anything fun to share with our readers?
We finally got some new products in the making which we are really excited to share with our followers. We can say that we are soon gonna release a brand new couple of bracelets, with our own 100% upcycled plastic pearls. And more different jewellery is in the making.
